Lifejackets for all?
The following events are real, but names have been changed to protect anonymity
In the mid 1980s a pal of mine, Peter, had bought a second-hand 26ft Westerly Centaur, Springtime. Modest she might have been by today’s standards but to us relatively impecunious young mortgagees she was a wonderfully tempting yacht to go exploring the oceans blue.
Springtime had been afloat in Bristol’s floating harbour docks over the winter but Peter was keen to take her round to a berth in Weymouth as a convenient base to go summer cruising along the Dorset coast and Devon’s south coast. I was delighted when he invited me to join him on this exciting delivery trip from Bristol to Weymouth.
Our first port of call was to be Ilfracombe, a convenient place for Springtime to receive a coat of antifouling between tides. Apart from initially heading in a south westerly direction along the north Somerset and Devon coasts the route after Ilfracombe appeared to remain fluid depending on the weather we were to encounter.
My sailing experience at that time was minimal, having previously only ever been a passenger in my grandfather’s Morgan Giles when I was a child in the 1950s. University, marriage and two lovely
